Bach for Easter with Robert Shaw

To mark Easter this year, we have the Robert Shaw Chorale's performance of Bach's profound Cantata Christ lag in Todensbaden (Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death), BWV 4.

The composition itself is an early one by the composer, dating from 1707 when he was in Mühlhausen. It is believed that he wrote the piece for an Easter performance that year.

The work is considered a "chorale cantata," a form that is generally based on a hymn tune, in this case Martin Luther's work of the same name published in 1524. For Bach, this chorale style would be succeeded by the recitative and aria format he would soon begin to use.

The Easter Cantata that is known to us today is a version that Bach performed in 1724 and 1725 at services in the Thomaskirche Leipzig.

Robert Shaw

This excellent performance dates from 1946. It was recorded in New York's Town Hall, I believe during the same sessions as the Cantata BWV 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, a Voice Calls Us, also known as Sleepers Awake).

The performers are listed on the cover as the RCA Victor Chorale and Orchestra, but the choral group is of course the Robert Shaw Chorale. Although some movements are designated as "duet" or "aria" as well as "chorale," in this performance Shaw allots all sections to the chorus.

The contemporary reviews I have found were generally positive. Here is the American Record Guide: "That Mr. Shaw's Chorale makes a fine and impressive sound is certainly no news, and we have come to expect clarity in their singing of contrapuntal passages. This we certainly get in the opening chorus, though somewhat to the detriment of the orchestra. If the conductor has not probed the depths of the mystery expressed in the first section he gives the hallelujahs with proper spirit and sweep."

LINK

Two Views of Britten's 'Ceremony of Carols'

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten wrote his A Ceremony of Carols in 1942, for boys' voices and harp. Today we have two recordings of this gorgeous work, from two distinguished choirs - the women's voices of the Robert Shaw Chorale and the Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge.

The St. John's Choir, led by George Guest, also includes Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb and Missa Brevis. Shaw fills out his disc - or rather leads it - with Poulenc's Mass in G.

The Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge

Britten had a well-known antipathy for the cultured singing such as produced the more famous ensemble at Cambridge, the Choir of King's College Chapel. (That did not deter King's from recording the work, however.)

The critic Edward Greenfield characterized the singing of the Københavns Drengekor, which the composer conducted in a 1953 recording, as "tough." He was, however, impressed with the St. John's version: "[T]ime after time in my comparisons I have been delighted by the extra responsiveness of the St. John’s singing. The Danish boys may just outshine St. John’s in the jazzy rhythms of 'Deo Gracias' or in the Orff-like narration of the same carol, but the word-pointing and the contrasts of tone and dynamic are far better controlled throughout by the Cambridge boys and the crescendo at the end is over-whelming," he wrote in The Gramophone.

Britten may have been less pleased. The Decca Discography contains this parenthetical note: "Following publication, the composer requested a re-make of incorrect passages, which was done on 8 Aug 66 and that version was used for subsequent copies." I believe the transfer here is from the revised version. The original recording sessions were in December 1964.

George Guest

My own view is that this record is a fine achievement, not just for the Ceremony of Carols, but for the Missa Brevis and Rejoice in the Lamb. The Welsh conductor George Guest (1924-2002) led the St. John's Choir from 1951-91, greatly enhancing its international reputation.

Marisa Robles

I believe this may have been the first recording for the harpist Marisa Robles. Greenfield presciently predicted a great career for her, which has been the case.

This performance benefits from atmospheric stereo from St. John's.

LINK to the St. John's disc

The Robert Shaw Chorale

Robert Shaw must have liked A Ceremony of Carols. He recorded it twice for RCA Victor (in 1949 and 1964) and for Telarc (in 1997).

In 1949, Victor apparently did not have high hopes for the Britten work - the LP cover subordinates his composition to Poulenc's Mass in G.

Britten wrote A Ceremony of Carols for a boys' choir, but Shaw recorded it with six women's voices from his chorale. Not all critics were pleased. Irving Kolodin wrote in the Saturday Review, "1t is heartening to see the appreciation of a good work, such as Britten’s 'Ceremony of Carols,' implemented by the vast resources of publicity and distribution possessed by RCA Victor. It is less heartening to observe a treatment which accords with the great American penchant for expediency (that is to say, the use of an available women’s choir, rather than the more desirable boys’ voices)."

Seventy-five years later, it is possible to admire the artistry of these singers and their conductor, while also noting that the recording presents little of the atmosphere that can be found in the St. John's performance - the ceremonial aspect is missing.

Laura Newell

The harp in this performance is played by the versatile Laura Newell, who has been heard here before in Debussy and as a member of the swing group The New Friends of Rhythm.

Francis Poulenc

Poulenc's Mass in G was the subject of extravagant praise from the critics of the day. The American Record Guide was overwhelmed: "This Mass, stark, bare, unadorned as it may be, in the fifteen minutes duration is as filled with the distilled essence of devotion, of genuine religious feeling as any of the full-length scores of the classical or baroque periods. 1 know of no unaccompanied work in the modern idiom that can approach it; one would have to travel as back as Palestrina for serious competition." I mostly hear the stark, bare, unadorned aspect of the work, although it is earnest and well performed here.

Victor's sound is typical of the time - clear and not very atmospheric.

LINK to the Robert Shaw Chorale disc

Note: I have uploaded quite a few of Shaw's recordings in the past. You can find them here - including his 1946 and 1952 Christmas albums.

Robert Shaw's 'Treasury of Easter Songs'

Toward the end of last year I posted Robert Shaw's early LPs of both Thanksgiving and Christmas music. Today I am adding to the collection with his Treasury of Easter Songs, which came out in 1952.

Similar to his other sets, the famed choral conductor assembled a variety of seasonal material, ranging from Schütz to spirituals and across several centuries. There are 20 selections presented in a relatively brief period. Nothing wears out its welcome, but the stylistic diversity elicited equally diverse critical opinions.

Enthusiastic: "Mr. Shaw has chosen these selections with extreme care. He seemingly had in mind pieces of musical merit with a very wide variety of appeal ... all sung artistically with the highest regard for good taste." [The New Records]

Skeptical: "[T]he twenty brief selections sometimes follow one another in incongruous juxtaposition ... the attempt to include all classes of Easter music has made for unevenness." [The New York Times]

Robert Shaw

By this time, the Chorale's excellence was seemingly taken for granted. The American Record Guide commented, "The performances are in the well-known clean-cut Shaw style, the recording generally good but occasionally overloaded." If by "clean-cut," the critic means the unanimity of ensemble without ever seeming detached, I guess this is accurate. Seventy years on, the program strikes this listener as being supremely well performed.

It's not clear when most of the program was recorded, but we do know that the Bach and Poulenc pieces were taped in the Manhattan Center in 1950.

Bonus: 'Easter Parade'

Ralph Hunter

In keeping with the eclectic theme, I have added one bonus to the program: the Chorale's 1953 recording of Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade," here in a recording led by Ralph Hunter, a distinguished choral trainer in his own right who was at the time the conductor of the Collegiate Chorale, which Shaw had founded.

The LP is from my collection; the single comes from an Internet Archive needle drop. The download includes scans of both the first and second LP covers, along with the reviews excerpted above.

LINK

Robert Shaw Conducts Bach Cantatas

The young conductor Robert Shaw started recording the music of J.S. Bach soon after he began his association with the Victor company. His first effort was a set of arias with Marian Anderson in June 1946; soon thereafter he turned to Bach's Cantata BWV 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, a voice calls us, generally called Sleepers, awake! in English), one of the composer's best-known choral works.

Today's transfer comes from an early LP that coupled BWV 140 with Shaw's 1949 recording of the equally compelling but less recognized Cantata BWV 131 Aus der Tiefe (Out of the depths). 

Both these compositions are church cantatas, setting sacred texts. Aus der Tiefe is a very early example of Bach's work in the form, written in 1707 when he was resident in Mühlhausen. Wachet auf comes from 1731, when he was in Leipzig.

Robert Shaw

Bach structured the works to intersperse variations on a hymn tune with contrasting passages. In Wachet auf, the chorale is based on a Lutheran hymn published by Philipp Nicolai in 1599. The fourth movement is a chorale prelude that was later published as one of the Schübler Chorales for organ, achieving independent renown. (I've appended two of these to the post as a bonus - see below.)

In BWV 140 the chorales are separated by recitatives and arias from an unknown source or sources that depict a wedding of the soul and Jesus. In the fourth movement, the bass sings, "Ich habe mich mit dir / Von Ewigkeit vertraut" ("I have betrothed myself to you from eternity to eternity").

BWV 131 does not include recitatives. The text is based on Psalm 130 and also incorporates the words of a chorale, derived from "Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut" by Bartholomäus Ringwaldt.

Shaw's recordings are among the earliest of these works; BWV 131 was a first recording. The more popular BWV 140 had two earlier issues. As you might expect, stylistically Shaw's readings have been surpassed. Even so, his use of relatively small forces pointed to the future.

Paul Matthen

The vocal soloists are variable. Bass Paul Matthen is excellent in both works, as is tenor William Hess in Aus der Tiefe. Soprano Suzanne Freil is good in Wachet auf, but tenor Roy Russell is shaky in his brief recitative.

Shaw employed some of the best instrumentalists for these works. Oboist Robert Bloom and violinist Joseph Fuchs can be heard in both cantatas. The continuo in BWV 131 was provided by harpsichordist Sylvia Marlowe and cellist Bernard Greenhouse.

Joseph Fuchs and Robert Bloom

The sound in BWV 131, from 1949 and the Manhattan Center, was better than BWV 140, from three years earlier and Town Hall, but both are more than acceptable. 

Unlike the LP, the download is tracked and includes texts and translations, along with several reviews. The recordings were remastered from Internet Archive. 

LINK to Bach cantatas

Two Chorale Preludes

As a bonus I've added the organ chorale prelude Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme BWV 645 along with the brief prelude BWV 646 Wo soll ich fliehen hin, in 1944 performances by Carl Weinrich, who recorded with Shaw. You can hear him in the recent post of favorite hymns from the Shaw Chorale.

LINK to chorale preludes

Favorite Hymns from Robert Shaw

The posts of Robert Shaw's early Thanksgiving and Christmas albums led me to explore some of his neglected recordings from the 1940s and early 50s - including today's subject, the 1949 album Onward, Christian Soldiers and Other Beloved Hymns.

Shaw's interest in sacred music was perhaps familial - his father was a minister. Then, too, he retained an active interest in all types of music, producing collections such as this early in his career alongside recordings of Bach and Mozart, while he was also preparing choruses for Arturo Toscanini.

Robert Shaw

The album above originally came out as 78 and 45 sets, later on a 10-inch LP. These transfers come from the 78s, which have much better sound than the LP. Because the album includes just six songs, I added five other compatible Shaw recordings from the same era (details below).

The album takes its title from the 19th century English hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" with words by Sabine Baring-Gould and music by Arthur Sullivan. The hymn's link of religion to war is perhaps unfortunate; there have even been attempts to remove the work from the Methodist and Episcopal hymnals for that reason. But the world was a much different place in the post-World War II years, and few gave it a second thought.

Here are a  few comments about the other hymns in the collection.

"Holy, Holy, Holy" (formally "Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!") was written in the early 19th century by the Anglican bishop Reginald Heber. It was set to a tune called "Nicaea," composed by John Bacchus Dykes.

Isaac Watts and Sabine Baring-Gould

The prolific 18th century hymn composer Isaac Watts wrote "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" in 1708. Here it is set to the hymn tune "St. Anne" by Watts' contemporary William Croft.

The words to "All Creatures of Our God and King," first published in 1919, are by William Henry Draper, who adapted a poem by St. Francis of Assisi. The words are set to a 17th century German hymn tune, "Lasst uns erfreuen." Draper possibly became aware of the tune through the 1906 arrangement by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

"All People That on Earth Do Dwell" is sometimes called the "Old Hundreth" because it was adapted from Psalm 100. The author was the 16th century clergyman William Kethe, with the tune by his contemporary, the French composer Louis Bourgeois. The melody is also used for "Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow," and Bach made use of it in his cantata "Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir" (BWV 130).

The final song from the Onward, Christian Soldiers album is "Now the Day Is Over," with words by Sabine Baring-Gould again and music is by Merrial Joseph Barnby. It dates from the 1860s. Richard Rivers is the baritone soloist on the Shaw recording. This touching piece can also be heard in the marvelous Jo Stafford-Gordon MacRae collection Sunday Evening Songs.

Carl Weinrich

The accompaniment in the hymns above is by the distinguished organist Carl Weinrich, Director of Music for the Princeton University Chapel. He later was to record Bach's complete organ works for Westminster.

Now on to the bonus selections, starting with the "Lourdes Pilgrims' Hymn," often called "Immaculate Mary." The French priest Jean Gaignet set it to a traditional tune in 1873 for use by pilgrims to Lourdes, site of the 1858 apparitions.

"O Lord I Am Not Worthy" is a Victorian-era Communion hymn of unknown provenance. (Shaw's record says it is a traditional melody.) Richard Rivers is again credited as the baritone, although no soloist appears on the record.

William Billings?

"I Am the Rose of Sharon" is a setting from the Song of Solomon by William Billings, perhaps the best-known of the early American composers. About the portrait at right - there are several images on the web purporting to be Billings, none of which looks like the others and one of which is actually John Adams. The fellow depicted may or may not be the composer.

The song "The Bells of St. Mary's" is closely associated with the 1945 Bing Crosby film of the same name. It actually was composed as early as 1917 by A. Emmett Adams and Douglas Furber. The piece is sometimes considered a holiday song because it is heard in the film during a Christmas pageant. The Shaw recording dates from the time of the movie.

We complete the program with "The Lord's Prayer" in the 1935 setting by Albert Hay Malotte. John Charles Thomas popularized the work on radio.

The performances are all scrupulous, as carefully prepared and presented as the other Shaw recordings available here.

The Church of the Heavenly Rest

These recordings were remastered from 78s found on Internet Archive. The sound was dry; I added a small amount of convolution reverberation to the mix. The first seven songs were recorded in the Church of the Heavenly Rest on upper Fifth Avenue in New York. "O Lord I Am Not Worthy" and "I Am the Rose of Sharon" come from the Manhattan Center. The latter is from an album of American songs by the Shaw Chorale with soprano Margaret Truman, daughter of then-President Harry Truman. (She does not appear on this cut.) "The Bells of St. Mary's" and "The Lord's Prayer" were recorded in the Lotos Club, then on W. 57th Street in New York.

LINK

Robert Shaw's 1946 and 1952 Christmas Albums

When the young choral conductor Robert Shaw issued his first album of Christmas music in 1946, it was immediately hailed as something special. The American Record Guide critic wrote, "As far as I know nothing of its kind has ever been so satisfactorily done for the phonograph before," adding "It is getting to be difficult to find new words to describe the work of this splendid group of singers and of their director, Robert Shaw."

This post presents not just that first set of holiday songs, but adds Volume II, which Shaw recorded in 1952.

Christmas Hymns and Carols, Volume I

Christmas Hymns and Carols contains 25 selections spread across four 78s, with some of the selections quite brief. This enabled the unaccompanied chorus to vary its program without monotony setting in. While most of the numbers will be familiar to us today, several of them were less well known at the time - "I Wonder as I Wander" had been popularized by John Jacob Niles only a few years before, and Shaw added "Patapan," "Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella," "The Carol of the Bells" and "Go Tell It on the Mountain" before they became ubiquitous.

"The singing here (all unaccompanied) is characterized throughout by fine spirit, usually accurate if not always quite perfect intonation, and clear diction," wrote the American Record Guide critic - praise that understates the quality of the singing on display, which is positive and rhythmically secure while also seeming completely natural.

The recordings were done in December 1945 and June 1946 in New York's Lotos Club, which was then on W. 57th Street down the block from Carnegie Hall. I worked from needle drops of the 78 set found on Internet Archive, which the resulting sound pleasing and truthful, if not overly spacious.

LINK

At an early recording session

Christmas Hymns and Carols, Volume II

The first collection of hymns and carols was so successful that RCA Victor had Shaw's troupe compile a second volume in 1952. In the meantime, the Chorale had branched out into hymns of Thanksgiving, which recently appeared here, and Easter songs, both recorded in 1950.

Victor used the same cover illustration for the second Christmas set as the first, while giving Shaw more prominent billing.

The conductor had established a permanent chorale in 1948. The back cover of Volume II names its members, including such well known singers as Lois Winter, Florence Kopleff, Clayton Krehbiel, Russell Oberlin, Warren Galjour and Calvin Marsh.

Despite its title, this collection includes very few hymns. In his notes, Shaw explained, "In our first album of Christmas music some years ago we recorded in addition to certain carols the twelve most familiar Christmas hymns; and in this album we had thought to include some five or six additional hymns next in familiarity. Time after time, seeking to find point of proper inclusion within the sequence of carols, the hymns would remain pedestrian, pedantic, faded and inarticulate. One by one they dropped out of the album. Only the greatest of composed Christmas music - a Bach chorale, a motet of Vittoria, or a chanson of Costeley - these only proved suitable companions to the beauty and sensitivity of anonymous folk music."

The reviewer for The New Records noted that the first volume "is probably the most popular item in the whole Christmas repertory," adding that "we have nothing but praise for Mr. Shaw's second volume."

The sessions were in July and August, 1952 in New York's Manhattan Center, near Penn Station on W. 34th Street. The transfers come from my copy of the original LP. The sound is excellent; more resonant than that from the Lotos Club. The singing is again superb.

LINK

Music for Thanksgiving with Robert Shaw

When the young choral conductor Robert Shaw made this brief 10-inch LP of Hymns of Thanksgiving in 1950, he indeed had much to be thankful for.

He had been discovered leading a Pomona College ensemble by the bandleader Fred Waring, who hired him to create a choral group for his orchestra. This Shaw did, and within a few years began his own Collegiate Chorale. He soon became so well known that he attracted the attention of Arturo Toscanini, far and away the most famous conductor in the US. "The Maestro," as he is still known, called on Shaw and the Collegiate Chorale for a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the NBC Symphony. Toscanini then engaged Shaw to prepare choruses for him until the older conductor's retirement.

The Collegiate Chorale took its name from holding its rehearsals at Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's Marble Collegiate Church in New York. But Shaw and Peale had a disagreement over the conductor's inclusive policy for membership in the chorale, so the singers departed the premises. (The story is told in more detail in this post.)

In 1948, Shaw founded a smaller group, the Robert Shaw Chorale. By that time he had already been recording for RCA Victor for three years. As far as I can tell, that association began with a set of chansons by Paul Hindemith, a composer that Shaw championed and from whom he commissioned a setting of Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.

His next recording was a popular success - the Christmas Hymns and Carols were done for Victor in 1945 and 1946, coming out as an four-78 set with nearly an hour of music. The performers at first were identified as "Robert Shaw and His RCA Victor Chorale," but by the time the same performances appeared on LP, this was simplified to the Robert Shaw Chorale.

It is that latter group that prepared 1950's Hymns of Thanksgiving, a brief 10-inch LP (and corresponding EP set), with six selections and only about 18 minutes of music. Although short, the album is of high quality. As the New York Times reviewer commented, "the chorus sings in the straightforward manner that choruses would sing in if they sang as well as the Shaw Chorale. Despite the title, it has year-round interest." 

Even considering the praise, I believe the writer is understating the skills of the chorus and its director. You will seldom hear such careful balancing of voices, clear diction, complete control of dynamics and total conviction. It is remarkable.

Hugh Porter

On the LP, the accompanist is Hugh Porter, a distinguished organist who was at the time the president of Union Theological Seminary's School of Sacred Music. The program was recorded in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. The sound is excellent in ambient stereo.

This Thanksgiving program is in effect an appetizer for the main course, both of the Shaw Chorale's mono albums of Christmas Hymns and Carols, the 1945-46 set mentioned above and its 1952 successor, which will appear here soon. The first volume was later redone in stereo, but neither of these mono sets have been reissued, to my perhaps faulty knowledge.

LINK

'Fancy Free' and 'On the Town'

The young Leonard Bernstein

Back in February I featured an early Robert Shaw Chorale LP, which led in a roundabout way to a discussion in the comments section of the competing albums that had resulted from Leonard Bernstein's 1945 Broadway musical On the Town. I was familiar with some of the recordings but not others, so theater music experts JAC and Andy Propst were kind enough to fill me in on what I had missed.

This led to my own exploration of the two On the Town sets as well as the ballet Fancy Free, which had inspired the musical. I sourced the original recordings from needle drops on Internet Archive, and cleaned up both the music and the scans. I thought some of you might be interested in these materials as well. Here is some background on the productions and recordings.

Fancy Free

Jerome Robbins choreographed Fancy Free for the Ballet Theatre to lively and witty music by Bernstein. It opened in April 1944. Decca recorded the score in June with the composer conducting the Ballet Theatre Orchestra.

Bernstein's wonderfully quirky opening ballad "Big Stuff" is heard from a radio on stage before the three sailor-protagonists burst on the scene. It is said that Bernstein wanted Billie Holiday to record the song for the production, but didn't think he could get her, so used his sister Shirley's voice instead. But Holiday did eventually record the song, several times. The first of her four tries was in November 1944, with a band led by Toots Camarata. This version was not approved so she tried again with Camarata and a different group the following August. No luck again, so she did it again with a different ensemble in January 1946. Finally in March of that year she achieved an acceptable take with a small group that included Joe Guy and Tiny Grimes, and Decca released that version in its 78 album of Fancy Free. I've included all Holiday's recordings of the song as a bonus.

The download includes additional production photos, some from the collection of Harold Lang, who danced one of the sailor roles in the ballet, and who later became a musical comedy star himself, notably as Bill Calhoun in Kiss Me, Kate and as Joey in the hit 1952 revival of Pal Joey.

On the Town

Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden, Adolph Green

The story is that Oliver Smith, who designed the Fancy Free sets, convinced Robbins and Bernstein that the scenario could be made into a successful musical. Perhaps so, but the team must have been thinking in those terms all along, because On the Town opened in December 1944 - only eight months after the Fancy Free opening. This was hardly enough time for Bernstein to compose the music, Robbins to choreograph the dances, Comden and Green to write the book, and George Abbott to cast and direct the production. But whatever its provenance, the musical was an artistic and commercial success.

As was often the case in the 1940s and on into the 50s, there was no integrated original cast album for On the Town. Instead, the principals were split between RCA Victor and Decca recording sessions, both beginning in February 1945.

Victor split the recordings between Bernstein and among young whiz, Robert Shaw. The composer conducted a studio orchestra in recordings of the ballet music. This is much different in some ways than the kinetic music that Bernstein wrote for Fancy Free; the "Lonely Town" Pas de deux is heavily indebted to Aaron Copland's Quiet City and Lincoln Portrait from a few years earlier. Regardless of its influences, the music is glorious. "Lonely Town" in particular is remarkably fine.

Rather than having individual singers assay Bernstein's songs, Victor made the unusual decision to turn the vocal music over to Shaw, who arranged the pieces for chorus and conducted those particular recordings. The result is enjoyable, while not resembling what could be heard and seen on Broadway. For that you could turn to the competing Decca recording.

For their recordings, the Decca company contracted with Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Nancy Walker of the original cast, leaving out John Battles and assigning his two big numbers ("Lonely Town" and "Lucky to Be Me") to Mary Martin, who was a Decca recording artist at the time. The musical backing varied - Lyn Murray for the opening scene and the Comden and Green numbers, Camarata for Mary Martin's songs and Leonard Joy for Nancy Walker. Martin handled the ballads well, even though Camarata's tempo is much too fast for "Lonely Town."

The download includes cleaned-up cover and label scans, the insert booklet and production stills for Fancy Free, and a January 1945 Life Magazine feature about On the Town. Vivid sound on all the recordings.

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'Sweet and Low' with the Robert Shaw Chorale

Previously on this site, we have heard from the eminent choral conductor Robert Shaw leading Bach cantatas with Cleveland Orchestra members and presumably vocal forces from that ensemble's choir.

Today we find him guiding his namesake chorale in an early RCA Victor LP, recorded in 1950, just two years after he founded the group. The repertoire is nostalgic songs from long ago, which had attained newfound popularity in the postwar era. (See, for example, this collection from Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae, also from 1950 and also including "Sweet and Low" and "In the Gloaming.")

The young Robert Shaw

The chorale's performances are predictably secure and sensitive. A few words about the soloists might be helpful.

Soprano Shirlee Emmons joined the chorale on its founding. She later was widely cast by regional opera companies, then became a noted voice teacher and author, including a book on Lauritz Melchior.

Baritone Raymond Keast sang for Shaw as far back as the latter's days with Fred Waring. Keast was in the Broadway casts of Allegro and Song of Norway in the 1940s. He also appeared on the 1955 RCA recording of La Forza del Destino (which included Shaw Chorale).

The accompanist is Raymond Viola. I haven't found much information on him, other than he was one of the artists on a 1952 RCA recording of the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.

RCA later turned this 10-inch record into a 12-incher by adding the six Schubert songs that the chorale's male voices had recorded in 1949. The sound on this version is quite good.

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The chorale in an informal moment on tour.
Shaw is at the center of things, counting the beer bottles.

Bach Cantatas from Mack Harrell, Robert Shaw, Marc Lifschey and the Clevelanders

This post continues my survey of recordings by the Szell-era Cleveland Orchestra under other conductors and different names. Previously we have heard from long-time Szell associate Louis Lane. Today the maestro is the famed choral conductor Robert Shaw in performances taped early in his spell as associate conductor and chorus director in Cleveland (1956-1967).

Shaw, shortly before
his Cleveland appointment

Although Cleveland is not mentioned anywhere on the packaging, it is likely that this record of two Bach cantatas involves both members of the orchestra and its chorus. When it was recorded (May 1958), Shaw was an RCA Victor artist. The orchestra, however, was under contract to Epic Records and could not be identified as such for this RCA disc. In any case, Shaw uses a relatively small complement of instrumentalists, so the issue is not a major one, save for the presence of Cleveland Orchestra oboist Marc Lifschey, who is credited with the important obbligato solo in BWV 56 ("Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen"), and is certainly also the uncredited soloist in the opening aria of BWV 82 ("Ich habe genug").

Marc Lifschey

I make a point of this because as far as I can tell, this is the only credited solo on record by Lifschey, principal oboe from 1950-65 save for one year, and a musician who was revered by other orchestra members. [Correction: Lifschey is also credited on the Mozart Divertimento K131 recording of 1963 - thanks to Derek Katz for sending a note about this!]

The oboist is repeatedly cited in the recent book of anecdotes about the orchestra under Szell, Tales from the Locker Room, assembled by longtime principal bass Lawrence Angell, who himself remarked, "The sound that came from [Lifschey's] oboe was often a miracle; so miraculous it astounded his colleagues." Said violinist Michael Goldman, "He was the soul of the orchestra. I got chills up and down my spine when he played." And fellow oboist Eldon Gatwood said, "I have never heard such a musical line," a particularly appropriate observation considering Lifschey's playing here.

But I am neglecting the principals in this recording, Shaw and baritone Mack Harrell, who is front and center in these cantatas: BWV 56 has but one chorale, and BWV 82 is entirely solo. Harrell's singing is flawless. He is a baritone tackling these cantatas for bass voice, but there is no sense of strain, with the voice always beautifully produced.

Mack Harrell

This production came late in Harrell's career - he died at age 50 in 1960, shortly before this LP was issued. It marked his second recording of BWV 56; he had done it as early as 1939 under Edward van Beinum in Amsterdam. Harrell's son Lynn, the famed cellist, was principal in the Cleveland Orchestra for several years in the 60s and 70s.

Robert Shaw had joined the Cleveland conducting staff in 1956, and was already a star in the choral universe. He had founded the Robert Shaw Chorale in 1948 and had produced many LPs of both pop and classical music for RCA, while preparing choirs for Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony. Following his Cleveland tenure, Shaw would go on to become the music director of the Atlanta Symphony for more than two decades.

Cover of original issue

Virtually all Shaw's Victor recordings are credited to the Shaw Chorale - but not this one. My supposition is that he used singers from the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus for this coupling of two mainly solo cantatas.

Michael Gray's discography has the recording taking place in St. Paul's Church, Cleveland; presumably this is St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, site of many concerts by orchestra-related groups. The sound is quite good. My transfer is from the Victrola reissue.